This time, it’s us holding the aces on Europe

Under Sir Edward 'Ted' Heath Brussels took many of British concessions, including all UK fishing rights

As chance would have it, my early years as a political journalist at Westminster covered the whole of Ted Heath’s campaign to bamboozle Britain into the Common Market, as it was then miscalled.

Nothing could have been more telling about the characters of the leader or the led — or, indeed, of MPs as a class.

The campaign involved bullying, bribing, offers of honours, peerages, offices large and small. There were even visits by party grandees to constituency officials, dangling honours if a rebellious member was got under control. It was politics at its most unpleasant.

During this unusually sordid time, the terms for membership of the Community were being sought in Brussels by Lord (Geoffrey) Rippon, Heath’s representative.

Brussels bargained hard, keen to drag out of Britain every possible concession while we were pleading to be allowed in — or at least Heath was.

So this was the much-vaunted Community spirit, eh? Brussels held all the aces and they let us know it.

An early message from the Brussels powers was that they wanted all the UK’s fishing rights, even though the waters were entirely ours. London groaned. Very well, let them go.

Even land-locked Luxembourg gets a share, but ignore that — just put in some delays to prevent British fishermen thinking they have been sold out overnight.

Brussels wanted us to sign up to the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), the system by which France underpins its farmers with massive subsidies and high prices.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel's reaction to David Cameron's speech was condescending: 'We are prepared to talk about British wishes', but now we hold all the aces

Very well, said London, surrender as gracefully as possible. Please extract some promises that the CAP will be radically reformed in due course, if not before, or at any rate eventually.

The Common Market’s negotiators got excited. It was all proving so easy. Perhaps we could deem North Sea oil, like Britain’s fishing waters, ‘a community resource’ — in other words, belonging to the countries represented at Brussels.

At last, Heath stood firm. MPs and voters would be outraged, he responded. So that idea never got up any steam.

Parliament’s task, meanwhile, was to provide the ‘full-hearted consent’ Heath had said was essential to a major constitutional change. The arm-twisting and bribing reached a new peak.

The substantial anti-market section of the Tory Party was whittled down member by member. Fleet Street, combined with the Confederation of British Industry — which is always on the wrong side of every public issue — came charging to the Prime Minister’s assistance. Heath’s majorities were slim.

Only a few held out. As I moved from the Daily Telegraph to the Daily Mail, my editors declined Heath’s suggestion that I should be sacked or taken off politics.

Now we have a new prospect. The UK can set about undoing the damage of the past half-century, not just in farming and fishing, but in all those crazy regulations from Brussels.

They affect every sphere of our lives, from selling bananas to hours of work, and apart from often being very, very silly, impose severe costs on the business world.

This time it is we who hold all the aces. German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s reaction to David Cameron’s speech was condescending: ‘We are prepared to talk about British wishes.’ This was seen by some British commentators as genuinely helpful.

How can they be so naive? What choice does she or any other EU leader have?

While we are about it, observe this simple statistic: last year for the first time, the UK became Germany’s biggest trading partner for goods and services, edging ahead of France and the U.S.

Yes, our trade matters to the whole EU, and is in any case covered by the European Economic Area agreement (separate from the Treaty of Rome and its bastard descendants).

Apart from which, difficult as our economic position may be these days, it is even worse for most EU countries where the euro constantly threatens to unravel dramatically.

And politically? Ah, that’s where our exit threat provides true leverage. If we were to leave the Union, the grandest scheme of them all, the project for a United States of Europe collapses. It would go down in history as a spectacular flop, a grand alliance shorn of democratic endorsement or political foresight.

As difficult as our economic position may be these days, it is even worse for most EU countries where the euro constantly threatens to unravel dramatically

The threat to leave is a veritable sword of Damocles that will hang over the EU until the referendum itself. It will make the Brussels powers anxious to placate us.

If the Government insists the Coalition severely limits what it can do in the short run — why do I sound so suspicious of Downing Street, I wonder? — Tory backbenchers are blessedly free to be as critical of the EU as they like.

Every mad ruling from the European Court such as the prisoners’ right to vote can be jeered at.

Euroscepticism can be stirred again and again. If that leads to a massive repatriation of powers during the negotiations (which might even be under Labour, who are bound to turn pro-referendum), so much the better. If it fails to achieve that, we can vote to leave.